The issue of discrete versus continuous formulation of system dynamics models has provided for lively, thought provoking discussion among modeling practitioners for more than thirty years. As early as 1961, Forrester argued that models based in the philosophy that real systems re continuous. Forrester used the example that of a contract signing, normally a discrete event, and explained how contracts can be viewed as continuous when one considers that contracts go through a process of negotiations. As the expectation associated with a contract signing increase the parties begin preparation so that the contract obligation can be fulfilled (1961; p.65). Thus, a contract signing represents a continuous process. The debate of discrete versus continuous has continued into the into the 1990's with Richardson (1991) maintained that the decision to model a problem discretely or continuously depends on the conceptual distance from which one views a problem. Richardson (1991) makes a strong argument for a continuous world perspective when he writes, “Only from a more distant perspective in which events ‘behavior is a consequence of feedback structure’ arise and be perceived to yield powerful insight” (p. 346)

This is the whole item.

Date created

• 1996

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
  Contact Us for questions or additional rights.

ITEM CONTEXT

Part of

227da936724c4223c5a64764d3922694

Scope and Contents

Part of

ca4810593b2703dcaa087957ab13af91

Scope and Contents

Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

Scope and Contents

Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives